Marlene and the wall

In recent years Germany has reclaimed Berliner Marlene Dietrich. On the 10th anniversary of her death, a new book of letters sheds light on an extraordinary relationship between two of the country's best known celebrities. By Kate Connolly

For years it was unfashionable in Germany to worship Marlene Dietrich, the Berlin diva who escaped Nazi territory for the US and during the war years did the unthinkable by entertaining US troops. For years afterwards she was accused of anti-patriotism and lived in self-imposed exile in her Paris apartment with little contact with her homeland.

But in the past few years Germany has lovingly reclaimed her, and today she is one of the most potent symbols of Berlin. Nor has the tourist board failed to realise the potential she has to lure people to the capital. The wide range of events to commemorate her 100th birthday in December are barely over, but the city's cultural institutions are on a roll: the 10th anniversary of her death is looming, and so the party continues.

Under the title Marlene and Berlin, the city's cultural office has put on a string of events for those wishing to follow in the steps of the diva for the May 6 anniversary.

A walking tour takes in an array of places where Dietrich lived and made her mark, including the house of her birth in the southern district of Schöneberg, her school, the church in which she married, and the Deutsche Theater and Titania Palast where, in 1960, she appeared to German audiences for the first time after the war.

In the Blaue Engel restaurant on Gotenstrasse, a stone's throw from where Dietrich was born, diners are invited to partake of her favourite dishes in a set three-course menu, and to conclude, fans are taken to the musical Marlene in the Renaissance Theatre in which Judy Winter offers her interpretation of Germany's most famous femme fatale. The next tours take place on April 20 and 27, registration is on: 0049 30 44409 36, or check out www.berlin-tourism.de.

Meanwhile for those who wish to dig a little deeper, there is a whole range of Dietrich-dedicated books that have appeared in the past few months, among them, Ick will wat Feinet - Das Marlene Dietrich Kochbuch (I want something fine - the Marlene Dietrich Cookbook) by Georg A Weth, and Marlene Dietrich zum 100 Geburtstsag (Marlene Dietrich - a 100th birthday commemoration) by Maria Riva.

Perhaps the most intriguing, because the story is so little-known, is Sag Mir, Dass Du Mich Liebst (Tell Me That You Love Me), which reproduces for the first time the love letters between two of Germany's most prominent international figures of the 20th century, Dietrich, and Erich Maria Remarque, author of the most famous anti-war novel of all time, All Quiet on the Western Front.

Their story began, according to Tell Me That You Love Me, as a black and white movie might have, on the Lido in Venice. It was September 1937 and Dietrich, recently separated from her lover Douglas Fairbanks Jnr, sat having lunch with Josef von Sternberg, the director who had first discovered her. In breezed Remarque, himself freshly separated from Austrian actress Hedy Lamarr.

Remarque's manners fascinated and enchanted Dietrich, as Maria Riva, Dietrich's daughter, recounts in her book My Mother Marlene. "You look far too young to have penned one of the greatest novels of our time," she told him. "Perhaps I only wrote it to hear your magical voice say these words," he elegantly replied.

Sensing his presence was fast becoming unnecessary, von Sternberg quietly excused himself. The two German celebrities talked until dawn. According to written and verbal accounts by Dietrich, in that crucial moment at the hotel door, Remarque fixed her with an earnest gaze. "I have to admit something - I'm impotent," he muttered anxiously.

The cool, calm Dietrich, never short of an answer, replied: "Oh, how wonderful!" Sensing that there were further depths to her character, Remarque added: "If it's so desired, I can of course be a totally enchanting little lesbienne."

"I was so happy!" Dietrich later told a biographer. "We would simply read and sleep, be tender - everything so wonderfully easy - God, how I loved this man!"

It might have been so wonderfully easy, except that Remarque was later to regain his sexual prowess, and to some extent lose his elegance. While at the start of their romance he was satisfied by Dietrich's culinary skills (and there are many who have testified as to the high standard of her liver sausage and sauerkraut) later he desired more. The emotional tension between them would build to insurmountable levels and eventually lead to their split.

Their newly-published correspondence shows, say the book's editors, author Werner Fuld and Remarque expert Thomas F. Schneider, that "it wasn't easy, it was a drama - a grandiose illusion full of lies and self deceit. And Remarque was never a truer writer than in these intimate letters to his cold lover."

The couple, whose relationship lasted until 1940, went for long periods without meeting. They cabled and telephoned frequently, but it was their letters that formed the focus of their romantic expression. She was his 'sweet little ape', his 'little, blonde melancholy panther from the zoo', the 'dolphin on the horizon', 'sweetest northern light', or 'Madonna of my blood'.

Some months into their letter writing Remarque formed his own persona, writing to his 'Aunty Lena' as 'Alfred', an eight-year old schoolboy cyrano. 'Alfred' would ask such childlike yet bewitching questions as: 'Do fish notice that it's raining even when they're in the sea? Or does it not interest them?'

Alfred was said to make Dietrich go weak at the knees far more effectively than Remarque himself. Her daughter Maria Riva wrote: '(Alfred) - created to court, beguile and enchant my mother - moved her heart to feel beyond all the emotional barriers which a normal lover has.'

In the last couple of years of their liaison, although Alfred still appeared occasionally, Remarque became the tempestuous lover, Ravic, who would later become the protagonist of his 1946 novel, Arc de Triomphe.

The collection throws more light on Remarque than on Dietrich, largely because most of Dietrich's letters were destroyed by Remarque's later wife, actress Paulette Goddard. But of the 20 or so Dietrich letters and notes that have survived, the most intriguing are the little notelets, some of which she attached to gifts of food - 'Dearest - this is beef without any fat in its OWN JUICE. You can eat the meat or throw it away', or a message on a telephone pad: '16 Sept, 6.30pm, Clinica Agnesa Logarno - Beloved Alfred, I'm sending you my whole heart'.

Above all, the letters give an acute sense of Remarque's vulnerability and an insight into his insecurities as a writer. Maria Riva has said that even as a child she was struck by Remarque's fragility. "What moved me most about the complex personality of the Erich Maria Remarque that I knew, was his astounding vulnerability. One doesn't expect the man who (arguably) wrote the definitive book about the personal experience of war to possess such childish innocence - when you initially met him, he came across as a world famous author who carried this glory and fate with a confident acceptance. In reality, this was Remarque's protective shield."

In some respects Dietrich and Remarque seemed opposites - she the glamorous, femme fatale film star, he the serious intellectual. But perhaps it was their similar situations that threw them together. They had both found success in the same year, 1930 - she with the film The Blue Angel, he with the publication of All Quiet on the Western Front. Both had publicly turned their backs on the Nazis although neither was Jewish. She had gone into self-exile in the US to escape Hitler's efforts to 'recruit' her as a player in Third Reich propaganda. He had his books burnt by Goebbels and was banished. And both were financially independent.

On top of the fact that a war was about to break out, they were both experiencing personal crises in 1937: she was 35, a considerably mature age for a Hollywood actress, especially then. He was 32 and his literary success lay a huge eight years behind him. Both were haunted by the fear that they would never shine again. "We have much too much past and no future in sight," Remarque wrote to Dietrich.

Romance aside for a moment, what does emerge is the interdependence of the two. She enjoyed him as an accessory on her arm, as well as the intellectual stimulus he gave her - his political ideas she often adopted as her own. She loved his unfailing ability to recognise exquisite wines. It boosted her appeal to be seen with him in the pages of the glossies.

Apart from enjoying her cooking (especially her mushroom soup), he in turn used his lover to shape Arc de Triomphe, the work which would finally free him from the trauma of being a one-novel writer and later became a film hit. The female protagonist, the diseuse Jean Madou, is a clear but not altogether flattering portrait of Dietrich: "An agitated and fading beauty with high brows and a face whose secret was its openness. It hid nothing and so never divulged anything. It promised nothing and therefore everything."

Just two months before he had written in his diary the desperate lines: "Work, work, get away from the Puma! Away! Away! There's no point any more."

He was wracked with jealousy over her many lovers, enduring her brief reunion with Fairbanks Jr. She in turn found his intensity too much to bear. Their intimate relationship ended in 1940, according to Remarque's diary, 'with much mutual door-slamming'. But she remained the lover of his fantasies and he, it would seem, of hers.

"Don't be angry. I'm desirous of Alfred, who wrote 'I thought love is the miracle that two people together are much easier than one alone', your ragged Puma," she wrote to Remarque in December 1945.

The poet contacted her one final time in 1949 with a somewhat prosaic, culinary request: "Be an angel and make me happy just one more time, with a delivery of veal and rice."

She fulfilled his request, sending a cooking pot with the message "My pressure cooker broke, that's why I'm so late. Kisses from Puma. To open, turn the top lid to the right."